The Shake Down Tour
A rainbow welcomed us to our campsite at Zapata Falls, summer 2020.
In November, Michael and I took two weeks off and hit the road for our honeymoon, doing a tour of Utah’s National Parks and other amazing public lands. But the trip had another purpose besides just being a killer vacation. It was our #vanlife shake down tour.
Sure, we’ve taken plenty of trips in the van since we built it out in 2018. But this time was different because our once-dream has become a goal: being able to live in the van full time for a year.
I’ve been working toward this idea for a few years already. Several thoughts spurred the dream. Number one being that Lexington isn’t where we want to settle down forever. As much as we love this city and the community of rad folks we get to call friends here, it’s just too damn far from the whitewater rivers and public lands we love. We’re routinely driving 4+ hours one-way on the weekends to paddle, and it’s not sustainable.
So, where do we want to put down roots? What’s the place that would fulfill our desire to be close to the outdoor activities we love, be a good place to raise kids, be affordable, and still drivable (not flight distance) to family? We considered Colorado and other “out west” locations for a time, including my old stomping grounds of Missoula. But the combination of seasonal whitewater availability, wildfire threats and smoke, the looming water crisis, and distance from family all made for a pretty strong case against the west, as much as we love it there. Bang for the buck, year round whitewater, and family ties make the southeast the best place for us to be. Western North Carolina or eastern Tennessee seem ideal.
With a general idea of where we want to call home, the next question to tackle was timing. When should we make the move? When we started contemplating these things, it was 2019. I was smack in the middle of my master’s program. Plus, my job at UK is great. The benefits are great too. It’s hard to leave that sort of security for an unknown. But I can’t build my career in a place I don’t want to raise a family. So I set out four goals for myself in 2019:
Graduate from my MPA program (Check! December 2020)
Pay off all of my student loans (Check! September 2021)
Create and hire a full-time manager for the UK campus bike shop (Check! August 2021)
Build a new campus bike shop to house the Wildcat Wheels program (…pending)
Goals one and two were personal goals. The MPA program would provide me with better career opportunities, and paying off my debts would allow me more financial freedom to pull off van life after quitting my job. Goals three and four were/are career goals. I wanted a legacy to leave behind and to make a concrete impact on my alma mater. The fourth goal has been the real wrench in the plans. We were supposed to start and finish construction on the new bike shop in 2020, but the pandemic derailed the project. The project is now back on the rails, but the timeline for implementation keeps getting extended by financial forces beyond my control. I’m currently re-evaluating how important that legacy project is to my overall life goals. Am I willing to put off our plans for another two years? What if two years turns into three? I think the answer is no. I’m already 32. As much as I hate the concept of a “ticking biological clock”, I also don’t want to be in my forties before I start a family. And I won’t be ready to start a family until we get to live our van life dreams and then buy a house in whatever corner of the world we will call home. All that to say, the timing is still fuzzy, but we’re getting a lot closer to pulling the trigger.
And in this case, pulling the trigger means stepping away from a job and city we love in order to live in our van down by the river. Hopefully hundreds of rivers! We want to take a year to travel and explore and enjoy all that our public lands offer. We’ve been jokingly referring to this as our “sabbatical”, but since Michael’s job is remote, he may keep working through it. And I don’t know that I’ll be funemployed the whole time either. Part of the goal for the van life year isn’t just to bliss out on adventures, but to figure out exactly where to put down roots. And a lot depends on where I can get a job.
Thus, the shake down tour. A two-week trip was the perfect opportunity to ask, “If we were living in this van full time, what would we want to be different?” When we built the van in 2018, our goals were different. Michael needed a tiny apartment to live in while he commuted to DC, and we needed it to accommodate our weekend adventures. That’s a lot different from two people (and a cat) occupying the space 24/7.
Unsurprisingly, we came up with a pretty daunting list of projects. Here’s a rundown of the four most significant ones:
We need an A/C unit for the van. While Michael and I have had plenty of hot and sticky weekends making do with open windows and a set of fans, we can’t have our kitty with us without air conditioning. Sometimes, it will get too hot for a furbaby to survive without it. And getting an A/C unit means we need to upgrade our electrical system from AGM batteries to lithium batteries. The lithium will give us 150% more capacity, and it will have a faster charge rate. But that upgrade alone comes with the sticker shock of about $5,000.
Secondarily, we need to make better use of space in our “garage”, which is what we call the area underneath the bed that’s only accessible via the back doors. This is the part of the van that holds all the systems; the water tank, propane, and batteries. But it’s also where we store all of our gear: bicycles, whitewater wearables and paddles, firepit, electric chainsaw, toolbox, shovel, camp chairs, tarps, backpacks…you get the idea. In order to use this space better, we have already started the upgrades. We bought a new water tank that fits over top of the wheel well, utilizing that awkward space and freeing up a lot of space overhead, where Michael just finished building a large shelf. We’re also going to rebuild the propane locker and move it underneath the kitchen sink instead of in the garage. And doing so means we need to move the gray water tanks to an external location below the van.
Third, we need to renovate the entire kitchen and living area. (Yikes). This area has two major problems. For one, the kitchen faces away from the sliding door. In most cases, when the weather isn’t cold, one person is outside setting up camp and one person is inside making dinner. Or, one person is outside hanging out with our kayaking friends while the other person is inside making dinner. The problem is, the person making dinner (usually Michael, because he’s the best), is facing away from all the action. If we oriented the stove facing out the sliding door, dinner prep could be a lot more social and less isolating. And since making meals often takes a lot of time, it has to be fixed. We’re basically going to chop the kitchen in half, keep the sink against the driver’s side and move the stove to the passenger side. The other major problem is the living/dining room setup. It made sense in theory when we built it, but it just doesn’t work well. The table is always blocking access to one seat, and it’s not quite big enough for two people to have their laptops open at the same time without our screens smacking into each other. Plus, because our Engel fridge sticks out further than our bench seat, it means we’re always sitting on top of the fridge to put on or take off our shoes and other quick tasks. Which isn’t great. So the dining area is going to transition from two opposing seats to a U-shaped bench that provides a lot more seating options, and a more flexible table arrangement.
Lastly, we can categorize most of the other items as “increase storage efficiency” in the main living area. Additional shelves, additional drawers, additional compartments under the bed. There are a few other creature comfort improvements, but that sums it up.
The renovation has already started, and will take up a lot of our free time this summer. I forgot to take before and after shots of the garage upgrades we’ve already done, but I will do so in the future and post more updates here. Now the biggest challenge for me is keeping Michael’s eyes on the prize. He’s a perfectionist, so any time he tackles a project, he sees six other things that we could do better and wants to change it. But that would quickly balloon an already expensive reno to a bloated whale of a project. I love that I have a capable husband who is so goal oriented. But darling, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. ❤️
